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Well look for lots of packets coming in or out, Maybe someone is leeching from you so view your stats and see if you have lots of the same refferer (Use grep or your webstat program). Does your site offer images or downloads? Do you use server side scripting (PHP, ASP, JAVA) if so have all the scripts that run on ther server been audited? There are lots of things it is easyer for you to narrow them down since you are at the machine and i am not so it makes it that bit harder for me.

Ok, see when I open a terminal... where do I go to search for traffic activity? what kind of file do I need to look into and where would it be located? My site is a new online community and yes people post pictures and view pictures all the time. They are also able to stream music. I use PHP and MySql in all my pages. What do you mean by having my scripts audited? Please let me know... thanks for your help by the way.

Well auditing scripts is checking them for qulity and security. What kind of connection do you have or do you rent server space/bandwidth? And to monitor traffic you would need to install some software doo you have root access to the server?

My advise would be to contact you hosting company and ask them why, I know dedicated servers normally come as is but say that you are not happy with the connection speed. Also note could it be you, Have you got a fast home computer and connection?

Have you actually considered that your website is a little "Graphically heavy" ?

when i looked at your site, your homepage looks like its about 250kb in size, whereas most websites should be no more that 100kb. (Ie, too many large graphics files!). This will cause your site to appear very slow to those people with slow internet connections, and will also mean your apache processes will be hanging around longer for each page request while they have to serve all these massive graphics.

Secondly, what is your load average on your server?
use the "top" command, and look in the top right for something like:

Code:

load average&#58; 0.45, 0.65, 0.63

The 3 sets of numbers show your 5, 15, and 30 minute load average respectivly.

The higher these numbers, the more strain on your server. If these numbers are always over 5 or 6, then you need a new server, or to reduce the number of processes running and finetune those that are left.

Thirdly, if this is a mission critical server, consider moving back to standard hosting unless you have any need for a dedicated server. Alternativly, install linux on your home PC to learn more about it. You really cannot expect to competently admin a server if you dont know anything about the operating system it is running - therefore let someone else do it for you, or learn more, is what i am trying to say.